What Arab reaction?

Israel's "response" to the Arab peace initiative has painted Arab capitals into a corner. Dina Ezzat reports
Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian territories and its humiliation of the Palestinian people and their leader, Yasser Arafat, has put Arab leaders in a bind. While the Palestinians' predicament begs for a concerted political response -- a view that is underlined by the public outrage being expressed throughout the Arab world -- just what a response might entail remains obscure. And as some diplomats argue, there is not, in fact, any reaction in the making at all.
Today, Arab leaders -- both those who attended the Beirut Arab summit and endorsed the peace initiative and those who bowed out -- face the same unenviable predicament of not knowing just what to do. The most obvious alternatives all have major pitfalls and creative solutions are in short supply.
"It is a very difficult situation. In a way what is happening now is not surprising. Nobody is really prepared with the appropriate reaction," commented one Arab diplomat.
Meanwhile, Arab capitals this week are debating Libyan and Yemeni proposals to hold an emergency Arab summit to address the increasingly alarming situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Each of the two countries has a different agenda for a prospective summit. Yemen wants Arab countries to agree on a plan of action to provide the Palestinians with any means of support they require. Tripoli, for its part, wants Arab leaders to convene at the Cairo-based headquarters of the Arab League to officially withdraw the peace initiative that they collectively endorsed in Beirut.
Neither the Libyan nor the Yemeni proposals have been met with much enthusiasm in the Arab world. Meetings during the past few days have shown that Arab leaders are none too interested in holding an emergency Arab summit, particularly if it were to convene to reaffirm the usual rhetoric about Arab rights -- a veritable lightning rod for criticism of such meetings. Attending an emergency summit to withdraw the peace initiative endorsed in Beirut as "a collective Arab message" is also out of the question. Conceived as a strategic commitment to peace, the initiative stipulated that, in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 and a fair settlement to the Palestinian refugee problem, Arab countries would consider their conflict with Israel over and normalise relations.
Arab governments that oppose holding an emergency summit argue that the Arab League cannot withdraw its peace initiative. "When this initiative was offered, nobody expected Israel to respond favourably. The objective of the initiative, it has always been argued, is to silence those who were saying that, unlike Israel, Arabs do not want to make peace. The objective was served," said an Egyptian diplomatic source. The source spoke to the Weekly on Friday, the day that Israel launched its reoccupation -- a mere 24 hours after the Arab summit concluded its final session.
During a press conference held in Beirut following the summit, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, the country that hatched the initiative, argued that this peace initiative was "an effective weapon to put pressure on Israel and to exercise diplomatic pressure at the international level to serve the Palestinian cause." The initiative, Al-Faisal emphasised, would not be withdrawn if rejected by Israel; it would rather continue to be a diplomatic tool. "There are some who want the Palestinians to continue fighting until every single Palestinian man is killed; this is an irrational way of looking at things," Al-Faisal said.
So, with the impossibility of any concerted political action such as withdrawing the Arab peace initiative, Arab capitals are asking what is the point of another Arab summit only a few days after the Beirut summit?
Neither is the suspension of relations with Israel really a viable course of action. Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Mauritania have made it clear that they reject Syria's request to suspend political and economic ties with Israel. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was clear on this matter in Beirut. Even as the process of reoccupation was launched on Friday, Maher was dismissing the proposal made by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad for all Arab countries to boycott Israel. "We have said it a hundred million times: Egypt will not sever relations with Israel. We think that these relations are useful for us and for the entire Middle East. They are useful for the Palestinians and even for the Syrians."
Meanwhile, various ways of downgrading diplomatic ties with Israel are being debated in the Arab capitals that have ties to the country. Indeed, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marawan Al-Ma'ashar went on record saying that Amman would be forced to re-examine the level at which it conducts relations with Israel if the deterioration of the Palestinians' situation continues to go unchecked.
Behind closed doors, however, Arab diplomats were admitting the difficulty of taking a decision about their ties with Israel. Some spoke frankly about US pressure to maintain "good ties" with Israel.
Meanwhile, providing significant military aid to the Palestinians is another dead end, particularly in light of Palestinian Authority statements about ending all types of militant and military action.
An oil embargo has been roundly rejected by the oil-rich Gulf states. A Qatari diplomat who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly recalled the infamous quote by his Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassim, who once said: "The Palestinians can either ask us for financial aid or for an oil embargo. We cannot offer both because if we do not sell the oil we will not have the money required for financial aid. Anyway, the oil embargo of 1973 will not happen again."
Palestinians, who are still recovering from the diplomatic affront they suffered during the Beirut summit when Lebanese President Emil Lahoud prevented Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's televised speech from being aired to the assembly, are asking the Arabs to come to the rescue.
Palestinian Minister for International Cooperation Nabil Shaath, speaking in a joint press conference with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa following extensive talks, called on Arab leaders to increase their support for the Palestinians.
Shaath, who has been unable to return to Ramallah since attending the Arab summit, emphasised the need for Arab countries to call upon the full extent of their diplomatic influence in Washington to encourage it to send international observers to the Palestinian territories and thus meet a long- standing Palestinian request that Israel has repeatedly obstructed.
"We are not asking anyone to abandon their traditional wisdom. We are only asking our Arab brothers to take a step or two up the ladder in their support of the Palestinian cause. We want to move beyond the communiqués that are issued to reject and deplore the Israeli practices," Shaath said.
Consequently, the alternatives are very limited. One is to initiate the Arab summit follow-up committee that oversees the implementation of the articles adopted by the Arab summit in relation to support for legitimate Palestinian resistance of Israeli occupation and to the potential downgrading of relations with Israel if it maintains a hostile attitude towards the Arab states. This committee has yet to be established by Lebanon, the current chair of the Arab summit and the secretariat of the Arab League.
Another option is to launch the Arab Peace Initiative Committee which would travel to around the world visiting capitals, including Washington, to mobilise international support to pressure Israel to respond to the Arab offer. This committee, too, still needs to be established.
Such measures could be handled at a foreign ministers' meeting. As one Arab diplomat opined, "This is the kind of reaction that a foreign ministers meeting could produce."
The only two meetings that were put together to address the alarming situation were at the level of permanent representatives to the Arab League, and were held last Friday and this Tuesday with the aim of developing an agenda for a foreign ministers meeting.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said, "The unabated escalation we are seeing in the occupied Palestinian territories is clear evidence of the Israeli rejection of peace. It is also evidence that the Israeli government is dealing with the Palestinian people and the Arabs in general from a perspective clouded by the arrogance of power."
Recommend this page
See Invasion
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor